Mercedes challenged as McLaren prepare big changes for Miami GP

Norris during Friday in Shanghai — Photo: © IMAGO

Miami Grand Prix

Mercedes challenged as McLaren prepare big changes for Miami GP

The team in papaya will have major upgrades for Miami

Originally written by Graham Shaw. This version is a translation.

Sunday 26 April 2026 16:10

Mercedes may have set the pace early in the 2026 season, but McLaren are heading into the Miami Grand Prix with growing belief that they can close the gap.

It hasn’t been a smooth start to the campaign for the papaya outfit, with Oscar Piastri suffering an early exit in Australia, followed by a frustrating weekend in China where both he and reigning champion Lando Norris failed to start the race.

However, signs of improvement emerged at the Japanese Grand Prix, where McLaren showed stronger pace against Ferrari, with Piastri securing a second-place finish and Norris adding valuable points.

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Since the Japanese Grand Prix the sport has been in an enforced hiatus with both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix cancelled due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

That unexpected break has given McLaren (and the other teams) the opportunity to rock up in Miami next weekend with a very very different package.

Stella and McLaren have high hopes for Miami

"Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of helped a little bit, like I'm sure helped all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than being busy with racing.

“But I could say overall that, across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40. Again, I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors so [it is] not necessarily going to be a shift in the pecking order, it will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame.”

Team in papaya playing catchup with Mercedes

The signs for McLaren early in that Japanese Grand Prix were extremely positive, with Piastri able to lead the race before a safety car handed Kimi Antonelli the advantage. Stella is honest about where his team sits in the pecking order, but also not without hope for significant improvement.

“We also have some performance to recover if we look at Mercedes, and to some extent Ferrari as well, but we are quite happy with the development that we've been able to manage in the background,” he added.

"Hopefully we should be able to see a slightly more competitive MCL40 in Miami and then in Canada, considering that the last race was already a decent competitive performance in Japan. So we definitely look forward to the next races.”

Stella and co learning about Mercedes power unit

McLaren of course is a customer of Mercedes, so in theory it operates with at least a very similar power unit to the one which has fired the Silver Arrows to the top of the standings. Stella believes that should become more evident as the races pass.

“At the start of the season a deficit might have existed for the natural consequence of being a customer team when the programming was so pushed - also from a power unit point of view - and that was OK and that was something that we were ready to accept, and we processed very constructively together with HPP.

"But now later in the season I think we have filled this gap, and we should have all the tools that are required to extract the most out of the power unit.”

F1 McLaren Lando Norris Oscar Piastri Miami Grand Prix Andrea Stella